Waste Management in Switzerland: Recycle, or Else! (Part 2)

Yesterday I described a community recycling center in Chavornay, Switzerland , what they accept, and how it's illegal to throw recyclables into the garbage. And yes, if you're caught filling your garbage with recyclable materials, you get might fined by the municipality. My sister, who lives there, knows of cases where garbage bags have been opened and checked, with fines resulting from what was discovered.

Swiss municipalities vary in their ordinances, like in the US, but the differences are mostly in the financial systems and incentives. Incentives go beyond the risk of a fine. In some places, residents are charged for garbage by weight, in others they pay for the number of bags. In either case, the more you recycle, the less you pay for garbage.

So, what's left for the garbage when so much is recycled? There's a fairly quick answer. Very little. And that's the entire point. The soiled papers, animal-based food wastes, plastic-paper mixes, and such, make for a pretty small amount that gets picked up by the garbage collectors on their weekly rounds.

The more interesting question is: Where do all the materials go from the center? Well, sometimes people will scrounge for things. (Indeed, I looked around for a Rolex, but finding none, I lamented not buying that one I was offered on the street in Naples.)

Otherwise, the materials are picked up by a public utility for waste management and transported to a regional center for further sorting. Some materials are actually incinerated and not recycled, for example, pieces of broken furniture that can't be restored or re-used. The vast remainder, however, is distributed to recycling businesses.

Medicines left at the center are protected from weather and locked away until they are transported for treatment "in accordance with their environmental threat" (I'm not sure what that means, but most is incinerated).

But I learned that the first priority for disposing of any kind of medicines is for the consumer to bring them to any pharmacy, which by law is required to accept them and convey them for proper destruction (I believe that means incineration). Take-back laws like this are more popular in Europe than the US as a way to handle several kinds of wastes. Electronics are similar to medicines – businesses must accept them back, then either recycle or refurbish them.

Even though economic incentives have proven time and again to be an effective way to change behavior, I don't see residential fines catching on here anytime soon. But I suspect my neighbor would put more recycling to the curb if he knew he would be fined for mixing it with his garbage, or better yet, if he was simply charged for garbage pick-up on a volume basis.